“No,” responded Captain Jones, “I have not yet begun to fight.” With his own hands the intrepid captain worked, serving the guns. Though blackened with powder and smoke, and painfully wounded by a splinter, he was calm and unagitated, watching every movement, but with a firm expression on his almost feminine features which indicated that he would never, never yield. He endeavored to compensate for the superiority of the guns of his foe by the rapidity of his own fire. His guns thus became greatly heated, and in their terrible rebound threatened to break from their fastenings. At every discharge his ship trembled from stem to stern. In Captain Jones’s extremely modest official account, in which not one word is said in praise of himself, he writes: “I directed the fire of one of the three cannon against the main-mast with double-headed shot, while the other two were exceedingly well served with grape and canister shot to silence the enemy’s musketry, and clear her decks, which was at last effected. The enemy were, as I have since understood, on the instant for calling for quarter, when the cowardice or treachery of three of my under officers induced them to call to the enemy. The English commodore asked me if I demanded quarter, and, I having answered him in the most determined negative, they renewed the battle with double fury. They were unable to stand the deck, but the fire of their cannon, especially the lower battery, which was entirely formed of eighteen-pounders, was incessant. Both ships were set on fire in various places, and the scene was dreadful beyond the reach of language. To account for the timidity of my three under officers (I mean the gunner, the carpenter, and the master-at-arms), I must observe that the two first were slightly wounded, and as the ship had received various shots under water, and one of the pumps being shot away, the carpenter expressed his fear that she would sink, and the other two concluded that she was sinking, which occasioned the gunner to run aft on the poop, without my knowledge, to strike the colors; fortunately for me, a cannon-ball had done that before, by carrying away the ensign staff; he was, therefore, reduced to the necessity of sinking—as he supposed—or of calling for quarter, and he preferred the latter.”